Capturing to External Hard Drive

I am editing my video on a MacBook Pro with a 120GB hard drive which is not anywhere near big enough. However I have an external hard drive that is 500GB that I am trying to capture the video to. I set it up in the Final Cut system preferences but when I go to capture now it says allocating disk space and then freezes. I think the problem is that I am connecting to the drive via USB as opposed to firewire. But if Im importing video at the same time through the only firewire port how do I avoid this? Thanks.

Re: External HD ports: eject the drive, power off, switch the cable to the adjacent port, power up the drive then see if the computer recognises the drive. If it does both ports work. If it doesn't...
If ports are okay (it seems cables are fine as both camera and drive are currently recognised via firewire aren't they?). Shutdown laptop. power everything off and then power all back on and then startup. Make sure camera is in right mode and startup FCE.
If that doesn't work just out of curiosity you could open up iMovie and see if your camera is recognised through the HD there.
You could try connecting the camera directly via firewire to the computer and reminding us that it works that way (you were using USB earlier were you not?)
Keep us posted.
(ps I'm off to bed!)
M.

Similar Messages

Dropping frames capturing to external hard drive

When I attempt to capture video from my Powerbook G4 using my Lacie External drive as my Scratch Disk, I get the 'dropped frames' error message. However, when I capture through my IMac Desktop G5 onto the very same Lacie External drive I have no problems. Both the Powerbook G4 and the IMac Desktop G5 have about 20G of free space on each of their 80G Hard Drives. Any suggestions? Many Thanks!

There is a good chance that your problem is caused by
using the HD in USB 2 mode.
Most people consider USB 2 is unsuitable for video
editing.
DV needs a drive capable of a consistent high speed
that can only be provided by FW.
Although the claimed speeds of USB 2 appear to be as
high, they are not because they are the MAXIMUM
speeds achieved and are not sustained. In the real
world USB 2 is barely half the speed of FW.
When using your PowerBook you could try
daisy-chaining your camera to the HD to the computer
- by FW of course.
Ian.
Thanks! Great Advice!

17" MacBook Pro freezes after Capture to external hard drive!!!!!! HELP!!

Ok, so i just got my new MacBook Pro and Final Cut Studio last week, and i was so excited, until this happened. I was trying to log and capture a clip to my 500GB LaCie Big Disk and everything seemed to be going fine until the clip got to the end of it's alloted time and then the computer just froze. When I closed the lid and let the laptop sleep and opened it again the clip is in place and everything seems fine. I tried capturing then w/ the LaCie plugged into the FW8oo port and my miniDV Deck plugged into the FW4oo, and it froze again after capture and then worked fine after closing the lid. Thinking I was crowding my Fire Wire bus I hooked up an external USB 2.0 drive and my deck to the fire wire , but the same thing happened. So then I tried capturing to my internal and it worked fine. I've captured to an external on my 17" iMac G5 w/ Final Cut HD for years and never had a problem. Any tips? This closing the lid thing just isn't going to work.
MacBook Pro 17" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

nope, david is right on the mark. powermacs with one firewire bus choke like this. i can't understand why apple continues to design with one firewire bus but i'm not a designer. anyone, ANYONE who uses firewire harddrives and firewire tape machines/cameras for editing NEEDS to invest in a seperate sort of firewire card (pick your flavor) and then we'd see this behavior go away. then there will be those that will whine "this never happened before!" it's happening now, firewire cards a cheap insurance against these issues.

Sound out of sync when capturing to External Hard Drive

I've been trying to capture my short film footage (5 - 60 min. mini dv tapes) on FCP without the audio getting WAY out of sync. All the footage is off. Any ideas? Here's some more info: I capture the whole 60 minutes of the tape at once. (And then I was gonna split it up later.) It all looks fine through the LCD monitor as it plays, but when I look at the footage after capturing, it's way off. I have a G-Raid, 500 gig ex. h/d that is empty. I have a PowerBook G4.
Can you capture it on your external h/d without this happening? Or do you have to capture on your internal? (which I believe, I don't have enough memory there.
Help, please, please, please.
- Michael

The best solution would be to use a DV capture utility and then import the resulting file(s) into final cut.
Aplle itself offers capture utilities, which can be found in the Developer Firewire SDK:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305924
You need a free Developer account and to download the SDK there. After installation you will find a new folder on your harddrive called "Developer"
There are several capture utilities in the program section of the SDK. You want to use the one called "VirtualDV". It´s very simple, but powerful though. It does capture without sync loss, compared to capturing via the Quicktime framework, like Final Cut and iMovie do. It simply grabs the raw DV stream coming from the Firewire interface.
After the capturing you have a Quicktime readable raw DV file, which easily can be imported to be worked with in any DV capable software.

I need to capture directly to a my external hard-drive

I have tons of material recorded on a MiniDV. It is on standard definition, but I have no space in my hard-drive to capture directly on it.
Nevertheless, I do have an external hard-drive, and I'd like to capture directly on it. How can I do that?
I am using Final Cut Pro v.3.0
I have a MacBookPro
I am capturing from Camera to Computer through FireWire.
My external Hard-Drive only works with USB.
Is there a way to do this?? I'm merely a beginner.

Hi -
You need to designate the external drive as your scratch disk -
FCP3 is several versions ago, and I assume your are on OS 9?
You need to get to where you control your System Settings, or preferences for FCP.
There should be a pane that allows you to designate your scratch drive of your choice.
I've forgotten what it looks like in FCP 3, in newer FCP versions it looks like this:
!http://www.spotsbeforeyoureyes.com/ScratchDiskTab.jpg!
But as pointed out, you really need to be capturing DV with a Firewire external.
MtD

How can I use an external hard drive for capturing? I don't have enough mem

I'm new at this...I have a Powerbook G4 and not nearly enough memory for capturing a full size video. Is there some way to send it to an external hard drive- for capturing, then burn it in my laptop? Would that external hard drive have to have IDVD loaded on it?

Hi artdrake
Just to add to the already good advice posted above.
Another possible approach which works for me, assuming the ext. FireWire HD is large and fast enough (I recommend at least 120GB and 7200rpm) is to format the the ext. HD as stated above (journaled) and then clone your existing startup volume (using Carbon Copy Cloner) to the ext. Hard Drive. This will circumvent installing a fresh OS as well as all the iLife apps to the ext. device. You will simply make an exact copy of your laptops HD to the ext. volume. It takes me all of 30-40 mins. on my G4 system to do this procedure whereas installing everything from scratch may take several hours.
Click Here for example/s:
Once this is completed and assuming the ext. drive is connected securely via Firewire, Restart the computer while holding down the option key. Select the ext. FW HD. Once your G4 laptop is booted to external drive, use it as you would the primary drive. The only difference is that you now have plenty of room to capture to or to burn a DVD. This saves you from consuming much needed HD space on the G4 laptop plus it also serves as a fully operative backup hard drive for your G4.
Hope this suggestion works as well for you as it does for me. Feel free to post back with additional questions/concerns.
(3) G4 PM's/(3) S-Drives/Sony TRV900/Nikons/6FWHD's/PS7/iLife06/FCPHD/DVDSP/etc. Mac OS X (10.4.8) My ichatav AIM account is: SDMacuser1 (Please use Text chat prior to video)

How do I capture tape-based media to my external hard drive? There is only one firewire 800 port on the back of my I mac. The manual says to import tape footage directly into fcpx, but then I lose my external hard drive. thanks for your help.

In FCP X How do I capture tape-based media (hdv clips)- which I want to import-to my external hard drive? There is only one firewire 800 port on the back of my I mac. The FCPX manual says to import tape footage directly into final cut, which works, but then I lose my external hard drive Do I have to import it into an event, then copy it over to an external hard drive? On Larry Jordan's tutorial, he has 3 external hard drives that show up on his monitor WHILE he imports his tape based media. How is that done? I can only get either the camera to appear OR my external hard drive. thanks for your help.

Thanks for your response, but that doesn't solve the problem. Yes, the LaCie hard drive has 2 firewire ports-
I have always done what you suggest (works fine in FCP7), but in FCPX when I do that the camcorder icon
does not appear. It only shows up when I DIRECTLY import the footage via firewire. ????

My external hard drives are causing problems when i capture DV in FCP

We have external hard drives (2 different brands lacie and WD) are causing dropped frames when I capture DV in FCP. This only happens when they are connected via firewire 800. When I connect them using USB everything works great. Any ideas why this could be? We have 2 of each drive and 2 older mac pros and they both have this issue with every combination of drives I try. I've also tried reseting the ports with no luck...

Connecting your camcorder to even 1 FW drive constitutes daisy-chaining. Even if you have two FW ports in your Mac, connecting a drive to one port and your camcorder to the other is the same as daisy-chaining as far as your Mac is concerned.
Try capuring from your camcorder with no exernal FW drives attached. Verify that works before trying anything else.
Also, I noticed your profile says you have a Mac Pro. You might consider adding a FW card in order to get extra FW ports that are not on the same FW bus as the built-in FW ports. Then you could connect your external FW drives to the card; and your camcorder to the built-in ports and it should work.

I need to back up my imac running Tiger (no time machine) so that we can upgrade OS. It is set up for multiple accounts. How do I capture all files in each account using newly purchased USB external hard drive?

I need to back up my imac running Tiger (no time machine) so that we can upgrade OS. It is set up for multiple accounts. How do I capture all files in each account using newly purchased USB external hard drive? Thanks!

Backup Software Recommendations
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Others may be found at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Or you can simply use the Restore option of Disk Utility to clone the drive to the backup:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
Select the destination volume from the left side list.
Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Trouble capturing with new external hard drive

OK, I finally bought the correct-- at least I think it's the correct--- external hard drive (160 GB lacie). However, when I use "capture now" I get an "allocating disk space" message. This message usually stays up for a very long time with the spinning pin wheel, which results in only a small fraction of my video being captured.... if any at all.
I'm assuming this has something to do with the addition of the external hard drive... any suggestions?

Macintosh HD>Applications>Utilities>Disc utility.
Click the Information Tab if it's not already open.
Click on the Disc you wish to check (Lacie). this will tell you the FORMAT, is it HFS+? That's the same as Mac OS Extended, the one you want.
If it's not click the Erase Tab and re-set it.
This link will give you all the details:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
Al

How to capture straight to External Hard Drive?

Ok,
So i go to system settings and click 'set'
My ext hard drive is on the left under devices, but it wont allow me to click on it...
Its a Lacie 1TB ext hard drive.
I'm using Final Cut Express 4.0.1
Basically i need to capture about 15hours of footage and doubt I'll have enough space on the mac itself, and want to capture it straight to the external hard drive, so i can edit on a different computer
hmmmmm
any ideas?
cheers

Select the drive and use Get Info. See how it's formatted.
Some cameras cannot capture to a FW drive unless they're on a separate bus. There's only one FW bus in a Mac unless you can add third party hardware.
You keep saying you click on the drive. Where exactly are you clicking?
Click the Set button to select the drive. Then click the checkboxes to activate the functions you want. Then click the internal drive checkboxes to deselect them.
If that's not working for you try trashing your preferences and you'll get a dialog to set your scratch disk at start up.

Am I supposed to use my external hard drive as my ONLY scratch disc?

I was just wondering when selecting a scratch disk for final cut pro, should I allow my computers hard drive AND external hard drive to do video/audio capture and video/audio render or just select my external hard drive to do it? Will it make it easier on my computer? or should i make both of them do it.

Hi,
You should Ideally always capture to an external hard drive through firewire. Here is a very useful link for you.
http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_archive.html
DM

"unable to open project file" on external hard drive

I see other users had this same issue, but I read all the relevant posts and they haven't helped me. basically, I created and saved a project (along with all scratch disks) on an external hard drive. then, when I closed the project and re-opened it, it was "unable to open project file." however, it looks like all the project files are still on the hard drive (capture scratch, autosave vault, etc.) so seems like this should be redeemable. what can I do?
thank you in advance, you are angellic!

What is the exact message? Try copying it to your computers system drive and opening it? What about in the Autosave vault? Look in there for the last backup, try opening that.
Shane

IMac using an external hard drive via usb 2.0

I am currently using a brand new 20" iMac with 4GB of ram and since this computer only has one firewire 400 port I'm using that for the deck and plugging in the external hard drive via usb 2.0, but I do have the option of plugging in firewire 400 to the hard drive. I've recently been having trouble capturing footage. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

You're experiencing the number one reason why not to use an iMac for video work: complete lack of expansion beyond a couple of firewire devises.
Yet, many folks will disagree with this assessment and their decisions are made solely on cost over functionality and reliability.
Go iMacs!

Just Got an External Hard Drive

I bought an Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus, with 750GB of space. I pretty excited about having it, but I want to make sure that I'm doing things correctly, right from the go.
So far, I have:
1) Connected it
2) Reformatted it to Journaled HFS+ format
3) Installed the software that came with it. (Not that I need it, I assume.)
4) Created an archive of everything that came pre-loaded on it and put the archive on my desktop
5) Partitioned it into 7 volumes (Is this a bit too much?)
Volumes:
*System OS X 4.11:*
Capacity: 39.88 GB
Available: 39.84 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s10
Mount Point: /Volumes/System OS X 4.11
Home:
Capacity: 39.88 GB
Available: 39.84 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s12
Mount Point: /Volumes/Home
Movies:
Capacity: 199.88 GB
Available: 199.8 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s14
Mount Point: /Volumes/Movies
Music:
Capacity: 149.88 GB
Available: 149.8 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s16
Mount Point: /Volumes/Music
Photos:
Capacity: 149.88 GB
Available: 149.8 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s18
Mount Point: /Volumes/Photos
Documents:
Capacity: 59.88 GB
Available: 59.83 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s20
Mount Point: /Volumes/Documents
Free:
Capacity: 58.51 GB
Available: 58.47 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s22
Mount Point: /Volumes/Free
6) Tested it (It works!)
Now I'd like to know if I did what I was supposed to do when adding an external hard drive to your system.
Do the sizes of the volumes seem right?
I have all these disk images all over my desk top. I tried to put them into one folder. Ha ha! They do NOT want to go into a folder. So I don't think I'm supposed to do that. What AM I supposed to do?
Before I partitioned the drive, I ejected it and the icon disappeared from my desktop. I wondered how I could get it back on the desktop. Tried a bunch of things and nothing worked. Then I thought, 'I'll try a restart." Damned if that didn't work. Oh, happy! Happy! Now if I eject one or all of the volumes, will I have to restart to get them back every time I want to back up or store something?
I noticed that SMART status isn't supported. Does that matter?
I'd like to back up my OS on the Maxtor. Do I really need the software mentioned in other threads (Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner)? Can't I just drop all the folders from Macintosh HD in Finder to the appropriate icon?
I know there's a lot of question here. Sorry!
I'd really appreciate a review and advise.
Thanks!

If there's a practical limit on the number of disk partitions, it's the number of drive icons cluttering up the Desktop (unless you set the Finder preferences to not show hard drives on the desktop). The correct size of disk partitions is whatever works for your personal use and preferences.
If you eject one partition on an external drive, all the partitions on that drive will also be ejected. You need to eject the drive before you physically disconnect it, or power it down separately from the computer; otherwise you risk damaging the drive by interrupting write activity (which includes system tasks beyond any overt copies or write that you command). It's OK to just leave the external drive powered up and connected to the computer. If you shut down the computer, the shutdown process will automatically dismount the external drive partitions; after the computer has shut down, you can power off the external drive. Turn the external on before starting the Mac. Restarts don't require dismounting or power cycling the external drive.
If you dismount the external drive, you can remount the drive partitions using Disk Utility, or unplug the external from the computer and then reconnect it. (Disk Utility obviously puts less wear on the connectors.)
A Finder drag-and-copy from the internal to the external drive will not capture invisible files (Unix systems quite literally have tens of thousands of invisible files), and copying the System and Library folders in particular will then yield unusable folders. Use SuperDuper or CCC. You can (probably) use the Finder to copy /Users if you like.
Non-support of SMART status is a pain if you ever need to troubleshoot the external drive but won't affect normal use.
Mounted disk images (which appear as drive icons on the Desktop) cannot be moved into a folder, only ejected from the desktop. If you're referring to the drive icons from the external drive partitions, those remain on the Desktop until the external drive is ejected. As mentioned, you can set the Finder preferences to hike all hard drive icons by unchecking the appropriate checkbox. If you're also referring to mounted disk images created after clciking on a disk image .dmg file, those also stay on the Desktop while mounted. You can move disk image files (the file icons, ending in .dmg) which when double-clicked create the disk images into a folder and copy that folder of .dmg files to where ever you have room to put it. Check that the copied .dmg disk image files will create a mounted disk image when double-clicked; you can then delete the original .dmg files to free room on the internal HD.

Capturing to External Hard Drive

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